J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

Ten minutes later Mac was knocking at Myles’ door. He was in his stocking feet, but looked better, like a drunk getting a hold on himself.

“Something to read,” he said. “Don’t feel like sleeping.”

Myles had some books in his suitcase, but he left them there. “I didn’t get a paper,” he said.

“Don’t want that,” Mac said. He saw the Gideon Bible on the night stand and went over to it. “Mind if I swipe this?”

“There’s probably one in your room.”

Mac didn’t seem to hear. He picked up the Gideon. “The Good Book,” he said.

“I’ve got a little Catholic Bible,” Myles said. The words came out of themselves — the words of a diehard proselytizer.

“Have you? Yeah, that’s the one I want.”

“I can’t recommend it,” Myles said, on second thought. “You better take the other one, for reading. It’s the King James.”

“Hell with that!” Mac said. He put the King James from him.

Myles went to the suitcase and got out his portable Bible. He stood with it at the door, making Mac come for it, and then, still withholding it, led him outside into the corridor, where he finally handed it over.

“How you feel now, about that other?” Mac asked.

For a moment, Myles thought he was being asked about his induction, which Mac ordinarily referred to as “that other,” and not about Mac’s dark secret. When he got Mac’s meaning, he said, “Don’t worry about me. I won’t turn you in.”

In the light of his activities, Mac’s not being a Catholic was in his favor, from Myles’ point of view; as an honest faker Mac was more acceptable, though many would not see it that way. There was something else, though, in Mac’s favor — something unique; he was somebody who liked Myles just for himself. He had been betrayed by affection — and by the bottle, of course.

Myles watched Mac going down the corridor in his stocking feet toward his room, holding the Bible and swaying just a little, as if he were walking on calm water. He wasn’t so drunk.

The next morning Mac returned the Bible to Myles in his room and said, “I don’t know if you realize it or not, but I’m sorry about last night. I guess I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I won’t stand in your way any longer.” He reached into his pocket and took out his roll. “You’ll need some of this,” he said.

“No, thanks,” Myles said.

“You sure?”

Myles was sure.

“Forget anything I might have said.” Mac eased over to the window and looked out upon the main street. “I don’t know what, but I might have said something.” He came back to Myles. He was fingering his roll, holding it in both hands, a fat red squirrel with a nut. “You sure now?”

Myles said yes, he was sure, and Mac reluctantly left him.

Myles was wondering if that had been their good-bye when, a few minutes later, Mac came in again. His manner was different. “I’ll put it to you like this,” he said. “You don’t say anything about me and I won’t say anything about you. Maybe we both got trouble. You know what I’m talking about?”

Myles said that he thought he knew and that Mac needn’t worry.

“They may never catch you,” Mac said, and went away again. Myles wondered if that had been their good-bye.

Presently Mac came in again. “I don’t remember if I told you this last night or not. I know I was going to, but what with one thing and another last night, and getting all hung up—”

“Well?”

“Kid”—it was the first time Mac had called him that—“I’m not a Catholic.”

Myles nodded.

“Then I did say something about it?”

Myles nodded again. He didn’t know what Mac was trying now, only that he was trying something.

“I don’t know what I am,” Mac said. “My folks weren’t much good. I lost ’em when I was quite young. And you know about my wife.” Myles knew about her. “No damn good.”

Myles listened and nodded while all those who had ever failed Mac came in for slaughter. Mac ordinarily did this dirty work in the car, and it had always seemed to Myles that they threw out the offending bodies, one by one, making room for the fresh ones. It was getting close in the room. Mac stood upright amid a wreckage of carcasses — with Myles.

“You’re the only one I can turn to,” he said. “I’d be afraid to admit to anyone else what I’ve just admitted to you — I mean to a priest. As you know, I’m pretty high up in the Work, respected, well thought of, and all that, and you can imagine what your average priest is going to think if I come to him — to be baptized!”

The scene rather appealed to Myles, but he looked grave.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mac said. “Don’t think I don’t know the awful risk I’m taking now, with my immortal soul and all. Gives me a chill to think of it. But I still can’t bring myself to do the right thing. Not if it means going to a priest. Sure to be embarrassing questions. The Fathers could easily get wind of it back in Chicago.”

Myles was beginning to see what Mac had in mind.

“As I understand it, you don’t have to be a priest to baptize people,” Mac continued. “ Anybody can do it in an emergency. You know that, of course.”

Myles, just a step ahead of him, was thinking of the pastors who’d been deceived into giving Mac the pledge. It looked a lot like the old package deal.

“We could go over there,” Mac said, glancing at the washbowl in the corner. “Or there’s my room, if it’d be more appropriate.” He had a bathroom.

Myles hardened. “If you’re asking me to do it,” he said, “the answer’s no.” Myles was now sure that Mac had been baptized before — perhaps many times, whenever he had need of it. “I couldn’t give you a proper certificate anyway,” Myles added. “You’d want that.”

“You mean if I wanted to go on with it and come into the Catholic Church? All the way in? Is that what you mean?”

Myles didn’t mean that at all, but he said, “I suppose so.”

“Then you do get me?” Mac demanded.

Myles stiffened, knowing that he was in grave danger of being in on Mac’s conversion, and feeling, a moment later, that this — this conversion — like the pledge and baptism, must have happened before. He hastened to say, “No. I don’t get you and I don’t want to.”

Mac stood before him, silent, with bowed head, the beaten man, the man who’d asked for bread and received a stone, who’d asked for a fish and got a serpent.

But no, Mac wasn’t that at all, Myles saw. He was the serpent, the nice old serpent with Glen-plaid markings, who wasn’t very poisonous. He’d been expecting tenderness, but he had caught the forked stick just behind the head. The serpent was quiet. Was he dead? “I give you my word that I’ll never tell anybody what you’ve told me,” Myles said. “So far as I’m concerned, you’re a Catholic — a cradle Catholic if you like. I hold no grudge against you for anything you’ve said, drunk or sober. I hope you’ll do the same for me.”

“I will that,” Mac said, and began to speak of their “relationship,” of the inspiration Myles had been to him from the very first. There was only one person responsible for the change in his outlook, he said, and it might interest Myles to know that he was that person.

Myles saw that he’d let up on the stick too soon. The serpent still had plenty left. Myles pressed down on him. “I want out, Mac,” he said. “I’m not a priest yet. I don’t have to listen to this. If you want me to spill the beans to the Fathers, just keep it up.”

The serpent was very quiet now. Dead?

“You do see what I mean?” Myles said.